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She curls on the couch sobbing. She found her son not breathing when she came home from her midnight shift. He is on the floor now. The fire department first responders do compressions on his bare chest. The man is lean and muscled with jailhouse tattoos on his arms, chest, and neck. It isn’t a […]

On a private employees’ group Facebook page, an EMT posts a video of a man standing on a street corner, clearly on the nod, asleep on his feet. Another man sneaks up on the nodding man. He reaches back and then slaps the heroin user hard across the face with an open fist. The victim […]

An older man with a cell phone meets us at the door to the apartment lobby. His hands shake. He motions for us to follow toward the stairs. “What’s going on?” I ask. “I just went out for ten minutes and I came back and found him.” “Is he breathing?” I ask. But he does […]

You are called for a seizure in the men’s room at McDonald’s. You arrive to find an approximately thirty-year old man stiff and purple, gurgling. “Versed?” Your paramedic student says as you break out an ambu-bag. “Check his pupils.” “Pinpoint.” You hand him Naloxone. “Give him 1.2 IM,” you say. He looks at you like […]

You find the patient – a young man – in respiratory arrest in a Honda with tinted windows behind a service station. His head is back, his mouth is open, and he is deeply cyanotic. His skin is warm and despite having no respirations, he has a pounding carotid pulse. On the floor board you […]

There is an anxious crowd on the corner of Hungerford as we come lights and sirens down Park Street. A woman with tattooed arms waves for us to hurry. A man is on the ground with a crowd clustered around him. I can see another man kneeling over his chest. His arms together like he […]

The man kneels in the grass next the pickup truck that has its door open. He vomits. The fire department is standing over him. “Citizen Narcan found him in the truck passed out, squirted him with two doses and then took off when we got here,” a firefighter tells me. I see the two 4 […]

Finally! The Federal Government has listened to the experts and released sensible evidenced-based recommendations on safety for first responders when encountering fentanyl and fentanyl analogues, including carfentanil. Fentanyl Safety for First Responders The document issued yesterday by the White House National Security Council is the product of their Federal Interagency Working group with collaborative support […]

The call is for an overdose in the stairwell of the apartment building. Fire has arrived just before us – they have propped the front door open. I enter with my house bag over my shoulder and carrying the cardiac monitor in my right hand. There is no one in the dim lobby to direct […]

Great article in the November 2017 edition of the American Journal of Emergency Medicine about the controversies surrounding the dangers of carfentanil, fentanyl and other fentanyl analogues. The physician authors, John B. Cole and Lewis S. Nelson, take the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the media to task for sensationalizing the dangers to responders of these synthetic opioids. […]

Cat CampYou gave her 20 Milligrams?!!I never even knew EMS could give a "transporting patient" any pain meds at all. Guess you can tell Ive Never (Thank God) had to be transorted in a rescue before. That is until recently, Jan 8, 2018. I slipped and dislocated my shoulder!!! The Pain was unbearable!! I pray I never experience that pain…
2018-02-10 09:08:03

Barbara WrightAngry Snowman: Naloxone RefusalsBIG CITY MEDIC, amazing how you tear down the attempts of someone trying to save a life at the time or the future. I would have fought for the user to go to the hospital. Big City Medic would lead me to believe you are becoming big city hardened
2018-02-06 19:45:34

NateNaloxone in Cardiac Arrest"What drug do you give?" is a trick question. In cardiac arrest of any cause, the one proven benefit to survival is CPR. Good CPR is a rarity. Most is middling. Second, in VF/VT arrest, the only thing that changes is defibrillation, after good CPR. The rest of ACLS has a paucity of data. It's…
2018-02-05 04:35:24

JordanMother and SonDrug overdoses are normally the ones you get back. So always especially difficult when you don’t. Only a recently qualified Paramedic and haven’t had to deliver bad news as of yet. Dreading the day I do.
2018-01-25 13:45:09